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Yesterday Microsoft published System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 CTP2. I was using the CTP1, and was missing some of the features, but now they seem fixed (however, it’s to early to tell, ‘cause the download is still running ).

One thing that I was missing just yesterday, during my training about Microsoft cloud solutions, was the support for Azure VM in App Controller – it’s on the list; can’t wait to try it out!

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According to the article on liveside.net, Internet Explorer’s (long awaited) "public beta refresh" is available for download…

If you’re still using the "old version" (of IE 9), go and grab this better looking version which is named Internet Explorer 9 RC(version number is 9.0.8080.16413 – this is somewhat newer then the version that "leaked" few days ago (that one was 9.0.8073.6003, in case that someone was wondering)).

The new version can be downloaded here, and more (official) information is available at this site. If you want to see what IE9 can do, the good start would definitely be at beautyoftheweb.com.

UPDATE: ZDNet’s Ed Bott gave a pretty wrap-up of what is new in IE9 RC, and you can find his article here.

A quicker Messenger – The time it takes to sign in, and to refresh contacts and social feeds, as well as animation speed, are all faster than in previous versions of Messenger. More efficient video chat - Messenger video chat uses 30% fewer CPU resources by offloading work to the GPU. Better facial recognition - Photo Gallery facial recognition is improved significantly and works more quickly. Larger movie uploads - Movie Maker will upload higher resolution movies to SkyDrive (480x640 vs. the previous 320x480). Higher bit-rate movies - Movie Maker now supports higher quality (bit-rate) content. Better spell-checking - Writer has significantly improved the quality of its spell-checking. Better integration with Office - Writer is much better at retaining all formatting when you copy and paste from Word and other Microsoft Office programs. Better handling of Gmail – Mail now automatically handles Gmail’s spam and trash folders properly. Faster web filtering - Family Safety web filtering is 35% faster than in the previous version.